STIJ 5014 Distributed System

Instruction: Answer ALL questions in the space provided.

1. Cloud Computing (CC) and Internet of Things (IOT) are two examples of the recent trend in
distributed Computing. Identify and explain one application of CC and IOT that human can get
benefits from them.
nswer: Not limited to the following applications

a) Cloud Computing:
(2 marks)
a)
b)
c)

b) Internet of Things:
(2 marks)

a)
b)
c)

2. An Electronic Healthcare System is very important for managing patient information especially for
government hospitals under the supervision of Ministry of Health. Developing such system needs to
consider many factors. Based on distributed application model, analyse THREE (3) challenges for
developing an Electronic Healthcare System.
(6 marks)
Answer:
Student may choose any THREE (3) challenges from the list and the discussion must reflect to the

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STIJ 5014 Distributed System

3. Discuss TWO (2) characteristics of interprocess communication.

(4 marks)
Answer:

4. Describe TWO (2) approaches to external data representation and marshalling. Then use the most
appropriate one to represent a Student struct with value: {Mohd,Master, 1985}
(6 marks)
Answer

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5. Discuss the functions of the implementation repository (IR) from the point of view of scalability and
fault tolerance.
(6 marks)

6. To what extent may CORBA objects be migrated from one server to another?
(4 marks)

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7. Explain TWO (2) approaches for development of Web services.

(4 marks)
Answer:
2

8. Web services use client-server communication model and run on hypertext protocol. An example of
a web service is that it can help tourist to get the necessity information when they travel around the
world. This web service can be made available for other application developers to use it. Analyse
FOUR (4) features or functions of this web service.
(4 marks)
Answer:

9. Identify TWO (2) organizations that provide their web services for developers.
(2 marks)
Answer:

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10. Explain TWO (2) examples of security attacks that can happen within a distributed system
environment.
(4 marks)
Answer:











flooding a channel or other resource, denying access to others

11. Using an appropriate diagram, explain how a public key encryption works.
(4 marks)
Answer:
2 marks for the diagram and two marks for the explanation

- Two separate keys, one of which is secret (or private) and one of which is public.
- Encryption is made using the receivers public key
- Decryption is made using the receivers secret key

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12. Figure 1 below shows the process for digital signatures with public key. Explain the process.
(4 marks)

Figure1: Digital signatures with public key

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STIJ 5014 Distributed System

13. A name service is a specific service whose aim is to provide a consistent and uniform naming of
resources. Explain by example the difference between recursive name resolution and non-recursive
name resolution.

(4 marks)

14. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems aim to support useful distributed services and applications using data
and computing resources available in the personal computer and workstation that are present on
the Internet. List TWO (2) functional requirements and TWO (2) non-functional requirements in P2P
middleware.
(4 marks)

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STIJ 5014 Distributed System

er:
15. Clock is one of the important components of distributed systems.
a) Explain why computer clock synchronization is necessary.

(4 marks)

b) Describe the design requirements for a system to synchronize the clocks in a distributed system.

(4 marks)

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STIJ 5014 Distributed System

16. A server manages the objects a1, a2, an. The server provides two operations for its client: (a)
Read(i), where it returns the value of ai and, (b) Write(I,Value) which it assigns value to ai . The
transactions T and U are defined as follows:
T: x=read(i);write(j,44);

U: write(i,55); write(j,66);

Consider optimistic concurrency control applied to transaction T and U as defined above. Suppose that
transactions T and U are active at the same time as one another. Describe the outcome in each of the
following cases:

a) Ts request to commit comes first and backward validation is used.

b) Us request to commit come first and backward validation is used.
c) Ts request to commit comes first and forward validation is used.
d) Us request to commit comes first and forward validation is used.

In each case, describe the sequence in which the operations T and U are performed, remembering that
writes are not carried out until after validation.

(8 marks)

17. Compare between Optimistic methods and Timestamp ordering. Give TWO (2) points.
(4 marks)

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18. State and explain the FOUR (4) properties of transactions.

(4 marks)

a)

19. The operation create inserts a new bank account at a branch. The transactions T and U are defined
as follows:

T: aBranch.create("Z");
U: z.deposit(10); z.deposit(20) ; z.deposit(30);

Assume that Z does not yet exist. Assume also that the deposit operation does nothing if the
account given as argument does not exist. Consider the following interleaving of transactions T and
U:

T U
z.deposit(10);
aBranch.create(Z);
z.deposit(20);
z.deposit(30);

a) State the balance of Z after their execution in this order.

(4 marks)
b) Are these consistent with serially equivalent executions of T and U? (T then U, and U then T)

(6 marks)

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20. A router separating process p from two others, q and r, fails immediately after p initiates the
multicasting of message m. If the group communication system is view-synchronous, explain what
happens to p next.
(6 marks)

END OF QUESTIONS

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